School Music Abroad, 1901: A Series of Reports on Visits (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Excerpt from School Music Abroad, 1901: A Series of Reports on Visits

In discussions on the school music question what may be called the German Myth constantly appears. All sorts of extravagant statements are made about German school music, both here and in America, by people who are usually well informed. We are told (i) that in Germany every child can sing at sight; (2) that in German schools an hour a day is devoted to the subject; (3) that (contradicting the foregoing) in Germany only the children with good ears are allowed to learn to sing; (4) that German congregations smg in parts. All these statements, as the pages which follow show, are wrong. Advocates of school music are right in doing their best to force attention to the subject, but to employ pure inventions as arguments is futile.

In writing these reports I have never trusted to memory. Every detail, however small, has been noted in the class-room; even the epithets to be used in describing the way in which the exercises were done have been chosen at the moment and written down. The figures and facts have all been obtained from the teachers.

These reports will serve their purpose if some who are in charge of the singing in our schools gather hints as to the direction which their work should take. Perhaps the most useful lesson for the day is to notice the amount Of pains taken on the Continent to get soft and musical tone from the children's voices.

The significance of school music lies in the fact that it is the basis upon which national musical taste is built.

In the long Tim Only such music will be performed in any country as the public will pay to listen to, and the public will, demand what it can assimilate. The superior persons who have only one standard, and take their start from a symphony orchestra, forget all the process of growth that leads up to it, the patient tuning Of the ear and the rhythmical sense, the cultivation of a feeling for form and response, and for orchestral colour. The present outlook for musical taste is not altogether pleasant. The Music Hall and Comic Opera have nothing to say for abstract music, but mingle the art with grotesque characterisation and the business of raising a laugh. School music leaves Off at too low a point. The Symphony and the Oratorio are to the children an unexplored land.

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